Adorno linked the performer’s interpretive freedom to the stage of capitalism

Evidence

In the second part of his article, in the next issue of the Zeitschriji, Adorno turned from an analysis of composition to the historical dialectic of reproduction, the mediating link between producer and consumer. Here he distinguished between precapitalist music, in which a continuum of production, reproduction, and improvisation existed, and music in the capitalist era, in which such a relationship, did not exist. In the latter, the composition was like an isolated commodity separated from the performer, whose interpretive flexibility was highly circumscribed. In the nineteenth century there had been “irrational” performers whose individualism corresponded to the persistence of areas of subjectivity in liberal society. In the twentieth century, however, with the rise of monopoly capitalism, their counterparts were really trapped by the tyranny of the text. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 560

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to his later analyses of administered society and the culture industry in Dialectic of Enlightenment, and to the division between liberal and monopoly capitalism that recurs throughout his work. — connects to: Adorno extends Marx from coercive structures to the lived possibilities of individual self-determination. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 917; Horkheimer and Adorno located capitalism’s core in the exchange principle — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1635; Adorno defended typologies because capitalism had destroyed authentic individualism for most people — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 681 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The historical narrative of stages was essential to thinking capitalism as a system #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 861
• Adorno extends Marx from coercive structures to the lived possibilities of individual self-determination. #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 917
• Adorno defended typologies because capitalism had destroyed authentic individualism for most people #expands (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 681
• Horkheimer and Adorno located capitalism’s core in the exchange principle #corroborates (0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1635